Sunday, October 5, 2008

The Enigma of Obama

A school of thought is emerging that Barack Obama has an advanced form of narcissistic personality disorder. I heartily agree with Robert Bowie Johnson and Dr. Sam Vaknin in their shared conclusion, but I reached it from a somewhat different route. I had been trying to write an article comparing our political candidates to circus freaks such as chameleons, phoobs, and contortionists. But I was stumped when I came to Obama, who seems to partake of all of these metaphors. How can one categorize a man who combines:

a revivalist's grandiose and extravagant oratory,

a charismatic talent for swaying crowds for no logical reason that they can explain,

bewilderingly contradictory changes in positions on issues,

a squidlike ability to befog and blur statements into ambiguous or ominous vagaries,

a penchant for gaffes and misstatements combined with a dismissal of any corrections as irrelevant or malignant,

a humorless rigidity, elitist aloofness, and perpetual air of condescension, and

a thin-skinned aggrievement at being misinterpreted or of having his privacy violated.

It's like trying to cram a three-ring circus into a pup tent. Unlike a chameleon, he maintains a constant personal image; it is only his positions that change. He shares the ignorance and self confidence of megaegos, but they doggedly stick to one set of dogmas while he changes them with the ease of a shapeshifter. Moreover, he maintains conflicting positions with more grace than a contortionist and more rigidity than an india-rubber man.

I tried thinking of him as a Jekyll-Hyde case. I imagined the leftist Dr. Barack, having won the nomination, drinking a potion and turning into the centrist Mr. Obama for the final campaign. I had to discard this model because Obama manages to hold conflicting positions simultaneously, like one of those images under ridged plastic that changes back and forth as you tilt it.

I next thought of Obama as an amoeba [no anagram intended], incessantly changing its detailed shape to engulf its prey while maintaining a constant overall appearance. This suggested the image of an amoeba splitting in two (one to reassure the liberals while the other woos the centrists) or of Siamese twins or a two-headed man-a perfect freak for my political sideshow.

And then I saw the ads for "The Dark Knight". Of course, Barack Obama is Harvey Dent! Imagine Two Face in the White House, with his subservient aides saying: "Mister President, Iran has just detonated an atomic bomb. Should we attack them or negotiate?" Without a word, the coin flips up and spins in mid-air....

But all this imagery iconizes only one facet of Obama. His penchant for pyrotechnic oratory calls to mind a sideshow barker or snake oil salesman. His charisma suggests a hypnotist, or perhaps the daring young man on the flying trapeze. His pompous humorlessness suggests Victorian icons that I have described elsewhere. But his most prominent trait is the incongruous combination of meager mental resources, as evidenced by his frequent gaffes and childishly na‹ve pronouncements, with a greatly inflated self-image of his expertise and capabilities.

I then thought of one of those huge balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. There is something like that in C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, wherein one of the damned spirits, an ugly silent dwarf, leads around a large impressive puppet that speaks for him like a ventriloquist's dummy. Or like the old man in "Men in Black", who turns out to be a robot operated by a tiny alien sitting at the control panel inside its head.

But these extravagant fantasies are needless excesses. As she occasionally does, Maureen Dowd managed to pinpoint Obama precisely:

He seems more like a child prodigy. Those enraptured with his gifts urge him on, like anxious parents, trying to pull that sustained, dazzling performance out of him that they believe he's capable of; they are willing to put up with the prodigy's occasional listlessness and crabbiness, his flights of self-regard and self-righteousness.

But Dowd did not carry her analysis far enough. As Johnson and Vaknin and others have already pointed out, the traits she hints at would alert a psychologist to the likelihood of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), whose symptoms include

An exaggerated sense of self-importance; exaggerates achievements and talents; expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements

It is important to realize that NPD is much more dangerous than simple vanity. Even closer to Dowd's precocious-child model is Joanna Ashmun's description of NPD:

"Narcissists have normal, even superior, intellectual development while remaining emotionally and morally immature. Dealing with them can give you the sense of trying to have a reasonable discussion with a very clever six-year-old -- this is an age when normal children are grandiose and exhibitionistic, when they are very resistant to taking the blame for their own misbehavior, when they understand what the rules are (e.g., that lying, cheating, and stealing are prohibited) but are still trying to wriggle out of accepting those rules for themselves."

The Dowd-Ashmum model, which seems to account for all of the Obamic traits listed above, moves us to pity and then horror. A child with NPD is bad enough -- but what if that child had the immense power of the President of the United States? As if to answer that question, Ashmun's website refers to Jerome Bixby's famous short story "It's a Good Life", in which a small boy is omnipotent, to the servile terror of everyone else in his village. A plot summary can be found in Wikipedia. The whole story can be found here. But I warn you that, if you read it, you will be very anxious until the election is over -- and perhaps even more so in the years to come.

I think I have finally come to understand the reason Barack Obama appeals to many of his devoted followers despite his lack of accomplishment. The world of romance, not politics, must be our guide.

Reading the most recent polls, I've been rather bewildered by the enthusiasm American voters have for a Barack Obama presidency. There's so much about him that seems antithetical to holding the preeminent job in America.

It's true that the media has built a pretty tight firewall around him, insulating Americans from the less savory information in his past. Few outside of political junkies know about the depths and breadth of his Rezko association; the $100 million dollars he and Bill Ayers frivoled away propping up radical Chicago groups, rather than Chicago schools; his surprisingly close relationship with that same Bill Ayers, the one who was behind the Pentagon bombing; his mentorship from Communist and pedophile, Frank Marshall Davis; his numerous and overlapping links to organizations committed to America's demise; or the fact that his term in the Illinois Senate saw a profound degradation in the standard of living that his constituents enjoyed.

Still, even with that media padding, and rapturous leg quivering, the media has had to concede a few things about Obama. Voters know that he spent 20 years attending weekly sermons from a man who loathes America; they know that he spent a significant chunk of his career as a community organizer, a "profession" most Americans would find impossible either to define or to justify; they know that he was a law professor who never managed to publish anything; they know that he didn't sponsor any significant legislation during his tenure in the Illinois Senate; they know that he didn't sponsor any significant legislation during his tenure in the United States Senate; and they know that he's spent virtually all of his undistinguished time in the United States Senate campaigning to become president. In other words, no matter how the media tries to protect Obama from his own past, the facts that have leaked out reveal a man of little experience and no accomplishments.

In my world, accomplishments matter. If I'm giving someone the highest executive office in the land, I'd kind of like that person to have a positive track record. That's why I liked Romney. Everything he touched turned to gold, not just gold lining his own pockets, but gold for everyone else connected to the project. That's also why I like McCain. He may not be a Romney-esque money machine, but he has a record of accomplishment. Whether or not one likes what he ended up doing, he at least got things done. Not so Obama. Even the least informed Americans must know that he's done nothing in his career but talk.

Faced with what appears to me to be a conundrum -- why the majority of voting Americans would prefer for president a man whose resume is a big fat zero - I asked a friend for his opinion. He said (and I think he's right), that most people don't care about Obama's past record of accomplishments. Instead, he says, they simply like what they hear. He's promising them a lot of things -- such as a crystalline, pre-industrial environment, without any economic downsides; peace and harmony with the baddest of bad guys; universal health care; and wealth for all -- and they believe those promises, despite the fact that Obama's ineffective resume shouldn't give them reason to believe that he can follow through on any of his promises.

And just like that, I suddenly got it. I got why Americans are flocking to Obama: They are precisely like the woman who wants to marry a romantic bad boy. Sure, he's been running around on her, and he can get pretty verbally abusive. Still he always tells her he loves her and he promises her that things will get better. With those promises echoing in her head, she's absolutely certain that, if she can just get him to the altar, he'll improve. The act of marriage will magically transform him from an abusive boyfriend who makes pretty speeches into the man of her dreams -- one who is precisely as good as he promises to be. The fact that her friends keep pointing out his myriad failings and that they remind her that the leopard can't change his spots is irrelevant. He says he loves her and if, she can just force that marriage, he'll suddenly realize that he has to change.

I bet all of you, man and woman, have seen this scenario play out in the life of at least one woman you know. (And yes, that's sexist, but I don't know any men who go through this bizarre "she treats me horribly now, but she'll magically improve later" game.) And I ask you, those of you who have seen this or lived this: Does the man ever change, either because of the ceremony or because the woman wants him to?

I've never seen it happen. I have seen some men change, but that's come from within, and usually goes along with hitting rock bottom and then finding God. The wedding ring had nothing to do with it.

Right now, voters are thrilling to the feeling of dating the political bad boy, the cool guy who talks a good line, but who has a trail of personal and professional failures in his wake (and some pretty unsavory friends too). Everybody wants to date the bad boy once and a while. But the thing is, you don't marry the bad boy. Just as marriage to the bad boy won't magically make him better, a presidential inauguration won't transform the anti-American, unaccomplished Barack Obama into an effective statesman imbued with a true love for his country.

So, if you voters think there is more to this Barack Obama than just pretty words, I suggest that you do with him exactly what I'd suggest if you were a young woman infatuated with the bad boy: Wait a while (four years? eight years? twelve years?) and see whether, with time, he either grows up and grows out of it, or if he follows that downward trajectory, validating your decision to reject him in the first place.

Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time." Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now. Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.

The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain-- which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis. It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?

Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years-- including the present year-- denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago. Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?

We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't. Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?

Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis. Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs. Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!

The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead. The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd. But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.

Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported. The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.

But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.

If recent elections are any indication, Barack Obama's lead in the latest survey from the Pew Research Center bodes quite well for his presidential chances. The poll, released this week and conducted in the three days following his debate with John McCain in Oxford, Miss., shows Mr. Obama taking a solid six-point lead among likely voters.

Mr. Obama has history on his side: The winner of the last two presidential elections held the lead in the Pew survey immediately following the first general election debate. In both 2000 and 2004, it was George W. Bush who led in the Pew polls before going on to win the general elections.

In the Pew survey released Oct. 10, 2000, Mr. Bush took the lead -- albeit by a single point -- for the first time, despite the fact that voters felt Al Gore won the debate. That poll proved relatively accurate, as the popular vote difference ended up being 8/10 of a point (with, ironically, Mr. Gore winning the popular vote but losing in the Electoral College). In the Oct. 4, 2004, survey voters once again felt Mr. Bush lost the debate, yet he led John Kerry by five points and went on to win the popular vote by 2.4 points.

Of course, two elections aren't exactly a trend (Pew didn't release a poll immediately following the first debate before 2000), but with about a month to go until Election Day, Mr. Obama has other numbers currently going his way. He now leads in the RealClearPolitics polling averages in all the top battleground states -- Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio -- as well as the traditionally Republican states of Virginia and Colorado.

Barack Obama has used at least five different names** during his 47-year lifetime, according to a lawsuit contesting his citizenship qualifications to seek the presidency. Because most Americans know him only by the name they see on campaign signs, I decided to investigate the origins of his name — specifically, his last name — and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. Moreover, had I not read it with my own eyes, I might not have believed it.

The origin of the name "Obama," according to Wiki Answers, is based on the Luo verb that means "to be bent" or "to be twisted." [Note: No, I didn't make this up!]

That might explain why I am so vehemently opposed to the Democratic Party presidential nominee and his bid for the White House.

No comments:

In Brief

My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.

Leftism is the hunger for control over other people. The Left are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises. "Power at any price" is their intrinsic motto -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at.

The large number of rich Leftists shows that it is not material envy that drives them but rather HATRED of society's existing arrangements

Leftists don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

Among well-informed people, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists hate success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

A phobia is an irrational fear, so the terms "Islamophobic" and "homophobic" embody a claim that the people so described are mentally ill. There is no evidence for either claim. Both terms are simply abuse masquerading as diagnoses and suggest that the person using them is engaged in propaganda rather than in any form of rational or objective discourse.

The spirit of liberty is "the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." and "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it." -- Judge Learned Hand

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal would be that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions run away with them and who are much more in need of praise from others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average black adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.

I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

Although I have been an atheist for all my adult life, I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.